The Rachel Cruze Show - How to Reprogram Your Brain to Save Money with Dr. Caroline Leaf

Episode Date: April 11, 2022

Let’s talk about money mindset! First, we’ll go over some ways to make major progress when paying off debt, and then I get to talk with communication pathologist and clinical neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf about the connection between money and our brains. Don’t miss this episode! In this episode: 4 BIG Ways to Speed Up Debt Payoff How Millionaires Think About Money with Dr. Caroline Leaf   Helpful Resources: Ramsey+ Audience Survey Christian Healthcare Ministries Sponsors pay the producer of this show, The Lampo Group, LLC, advertising fees for mentioning their services or products during programming. Advertising fees are not based upon or otherwise tied to any product sale or business transacted between any consumer or sponsor. The following sponsor has paid for the programming you are viewing: Christian Healthcare Ministries.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm telling you, the sooner you get out of debt, the freer you become of not owing anyone anything and your paycheck coming in and you get to decide what to do with it, it gives you power and it gives you options. Hey guys, welcome to this episode of The Rachel Cruz Show. I'm so glad that you're here. And in this episode, I'm going to go over ways to reprogram your brain to save money. You're going to hear a conversation I had with the brilliant Dr. Caroline Leaf on the psychologist. of money. So is it possible to rewire our brain to have better money habits? Well, you'll have to

stick around to find out. But first, let's talk about four big ways to speed up debt payoff. All right. So many of you are out there on Baby Step 2 and you are paying off debt. And I know it can feel like an uphill battle. And listen, there are always things that you can do, you know, in the short time like limit your lifestyle, you know, eat rice and beans. I mean, there's these things we can do in our lifestyle that can help. Absolutely. There's also a couple of things, you guys, that can make really big splashes with your money. Big impact, okay? So, yeah, cutting out the $5 coffee here or there, sure, I mean, it's helpful as $5, yeah, and it can add up. But to really make some big progress, there are a couple of things that you can do to really help you get started on this process.

Or if you're in the middle of your debt snowball, it will help you. Or even if you're on Baby Step 3, maybe it can help you as well. So those of you on Baby Step 2, here are four things that are going to make a big impact to your debt stowball. Number one, increase your take-home pay. Okay, I'm not talking about just getting a raise, even though that could be an option, but I'm talking about your entire take-home pay, your paycheck. So one of those things is you're investing.

So if you're investing in your 401K while you're in Baby Step 2, money is leaving your paycheck before it even reaches your bank account. and I want that money back in your bank account. So by pausing your investing while you're getting out of debt, it's actually going to give you more cash to get out of debt faster. And again, this is pausing your investing. People freak out and they're like, wait, you don't want me to invest?

Oh my gosh. Listen, for a short period of time while you're getting out of debt, again, you want all of your focus, all of your intensity on that baby step. And then once you have a fully funded emergency fund after you're debt-free, then baby step four is investing. You can go back, invest into your 401k, Roth IRA, whatever it is, 15% of your income into retirement is what you will focus on. But if you are getting out of debt and still investing, pause it, more money will come back in your paycheck. Also, another way to get money back to your

paycheck is to change your tax withholdings. So if you get a really big check from the IRS every year because you've paid too much in taxes, that means money is leaving your paycheck going to Washington, D.C., sitting there, not earning interest, nothing, and then coming back to you in a big check, where that entire year you could have been using that money from your paycheck to get out of debt faster. So this is a really important thing to look at and to make sure that you can actually adjust your withholdings. And if you don't know how to do that, the HR team at your workplace should be able to help. All right. Number two. liquidate non-retirement assets.

And liquidating just means selling something for cash. So yeah, this can be things all around your house for sure. But two big splashes I see people make is with their home and their car. Now, I don't always recommend selling your house while you're getting out of debt. But some people do when they say, okay, my house, I have 50% of my income is going to my rent or my mortgage. That would be a red flag to say, yeah, you probably do want to downsize. and by doing that again, it's freeing up so much money in the month to throw at your debt. Also, your car.

Look to see, okay, you know, do I owe so much money? Am I able to pay this off in six months to a year? And if you're not sell your car. By doing these things, again, you're getting more cash to throw at your debt. All right, the third thing you can do is use other non-retirement assets. So by this, I mean, any savings bonds you have or stocks or CDs or mutual funds, or a whole life insurance policy you could cash out. All of these things are these financial entities that you have around

that will not be dinged if you cash out. Now retirement, I do not want you cashing out retirement to get out of debt. Okay, so do not touch your 401K or your Roth IRA if you have one. But everything else is up for grabs. And again, people are like, oh, but I've had this couple of thousand dollars from my grandma, from a CD, she left me. Cash it out and pay off debt. Like, what a legacy to say, Grandma, I'm using your legacy to help further my financial future by getting out of debt.

So look at all of those things. People get uncomfortable with that. But again, it is a powerful thing when you're able to say, okay, I can actually liquidate and cash out all this to throw towards my debt to get out of debt that much faster. Because you can go back and invest, again, not just in retirement, but if you want to open up a mutual fund later on down the road, put money in, you can because that means you'll actually have money to do it. Now, when it comes to insurance, remember, always have term life insurance. If you have whole life, you're paying too much for it, and you have an investment attached to your policy, which has a terrible rate of return. So get rid of that. Get term life first. Get rid of the whole life. Throw that money at your debt. All right. Last but not least, what you can do to make a big splash towards your debt snowball is to check all of your insurances.

Okay? So think about car insurance. life insurance, health insurance, homeowners insurance, renters insurance. I want you to look at every single thing you're paying on insurance, because this is something in life that you just get a policy for and you just keep paying it, whether it's annually or quarterly, it just comes out, and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah. And you don't shop around and you don't see, okay, is there something, you know, a policy that is great and it's all I need and it's way less expensive.

And I find that so many people save thousands of dollars by doing this, you guys. by freeing up your money with just your insurances. So it's going to take time. It's kind of annoying to do it, but take the time to do it because this could be a huge splash. And again, I don't want you stuck with a really expensive insurance policy.

And I don't want you stuck with any of the gimmicky policies out there either. So things like cancer insurance, accidental death insurance, phone insurance, all these things you don't necessarily need. So I get rid of them and put that money towards your debt. And of course, there are other ways to pay off. your debt besides those things. But again, those are the four biggest things that are going to move the needle. But again, there's other things like cutting back on out-to-eat category, not shopping,

doing a no-spin challenge, selling stuff all around your house, getting a side hustle or a part-time job. There are ways to throw money at your debt to get out of debt faster. And I hear from people all the time who do this journey and they do some incredible things to get out of debt. And we find that people are out of debt in 18 to 24 months by paying off their debt smallest, largest using the debt snowball method. So if you're out there and you're doing it, keep up the work. And if you're not, just know you can become debt-free. This is something that is so, so possible. And I know it's hard and I know it's a lot of work. But I'm telling you, the sooner you get out of debt, the freer you become of not owing anyone anything and your

paycheck coming in and you get to decide what to do with it, it gives you power and it gives you options. Now, there is something that my team and I are doing that I would love for you to be a part of. So I'm doing a survey so I can keep giving you content that you want and that is relevant for here on the Rachel Cruz show. So I would love for you to take this survey. Please, if you want to fill it out, you actually get a chance to win a $100 gift card. So the survey is only available until April 22nd. So go ahead and fill it out before it's too late. If you go to rachelcruise.com slash survey, you can take it there and we can get your feedback.

I would greatly appreciate it. And remember you guys, all of this, getting out of debt, changing your insurance, cashing out that mutual fund that you've had, but that's not retirement, all these things. All these things is to help you get from point A to point B, from being out of control with your money, owing people money, all of it, to being free and building wealth to change your family tree and be generous to others. That's what it's about. I am really excited about my guests today, and I'm actually going to read directly

from my card because it's so impressive and I don't want to screw you. it up. So, well, Dr. Caroline Leaf is who's the guest. I'll go ahead and do that. And I guess my first intro, I will say, I actually learned about you from my mother-in-law, who was like, you have to read this book, and she went on and on about you. So actually, that's how I was introduced to you. But, you know, even more importantly, you are a communication pathologist and clinical neuroscientists who's been researching the mind, brain connection and nature of mental health and formation of memory since the 1980s. That's so impressive.

How did you even get started in this? Like, I read that, I'm like, I mean, it is so beyond. It makes me sound so old because it's like nearly 40 years now that I've been in the field. So, yeah, I would just always love the mind and the brain, and I was going to become a neurosurgeon, and I was very fortunate to get into doing a degree that combined medicine and psychology and linguistics and neuroscience. And it was very, very new in those days back in the 80s.

and it was a seven-year degree that they compressed into four years. And needless to say, they actually put the degree up because it was just, we were working seven days a week. And it was just, it was kind of traumatic because it was so much hard work. And I remember at the time thinking, why did I do this to myself? But now I'm so grateful because it opened a whole pathway of thinking to me that I would never have got, if I had just gone into neurosurgery, which is an amazing thing, but I would never have understood the mind, the way I do now and the difference between the mind and the brain

and being, you know, practicing clinically for almost 25 years really gave me a lot of insight and experience into just how resilient we are, how amazing we are, how we can change things that, you know, we've got this capacity and ability and just doing the research I do, I still do clinical trials, and it's just incredible to see how people can be helped to understand just what it means to have a mind and how we don't have to, you know, we can't change our stories, but we can change how the stories play out into the future. So that encourages me all the time. I think it's so powerful because before we dive into the money part of psychology and all of that,

you know, on this, I'm like, you know, I grew up in a household where, I guess you could say, motivation. We listened to motivational speakers in my parents' car on cassette tapes. I mean, we just heard you can do anything, you can be anything you want to be, put your mind to it. I mean, that was drilled into my head ever since the kid. And so for me, it's a little bit of the raw, raw cheerleader. But what I love about your work is you actually take the science of that. And you actually show the brain, and you talk about the difference between the mind and the brain, but you really can.

I mean, this idea that you can really change, you know, what you think about and how that affects your life is true. Is that correct? Absolutely. And it really is good to be motivated. It's very important, but it's also good to be realistic because we can sometimes have a gap between what we think we should be doing and achieving and what we actually are, the place to be at in that moment. And that can create a lot of cognitive dissonance.

And there's also, you've got to be careful of thinking, well, if I just believe it, it's going to manifest in my life. Because, you know, there's one thing to say it. And there's another thing to really deep down inside actually have got to that growth process where you're really to move forward with anything, whether it's financial, whether it's relational, whatever it may be. So I think we can be hard on ourselves sometimes in the expectation of got to have this external success.

We've got to define internal success more. And we see there's so much in the mind-brain connection because your mind, is not your brain, even though you would think it is the way that people talk about it. But essentially your brain and body are the physical part of you. And right now, as we're speaking, the only reason that we can communicate and share this and go back and forth and see each other in process, it's because of the mind driving the brain. So, you know, your brain is a physical substrate. It's not a real, I mean, it's not doing anything without you.

Right now, as we're speaking, we're also making 810,000 cells every second. that's quite phenomenal. It may even be more than that, and that then determines the health of the body. But if you're dead, you don't do that. If we were dead, we wouldn't be communicating like this. What I've been doing for 38 years and trying to refine this process

and make it accessible for people is to understand what this relationship is and what level of control we have, empowerment or management skill do we have over this mind, brain, body connection and what does it mean for us as humans being alive? And how to kind of deal with that on every aspect, whether it's managing or mental health, managing money, which is your area of expertise,

and managing whatever it is, your lifestyle decisions, parenting, you name it. All of it. It's so fascinating because also the complex part, I mean, it gives our brain, our mind, all of it, such credit, right? Like, we are incredible beings of who we are. Exactly. And to be able to kind of tap into that, I think is so great. And I talk a lot about habits and forming habits and making choices with your money.

and for a lot of people that are listening or watching, you know, that they've had a tough two years, whether with the pandemic and all of it, but they're coming to this point where they're like, man, I'm kind of fearful. I'm kind of fearful of what's going on in the world. I'm nervous about my money. I have kind of a more scarcity mindset.

All of that plays in. So how do you see fear play out in the brain? Specifically, if you have any thoughts around the money part of the fear around money, but also just in general, how does fear stop us? What is going on in our brain when that comes up? Okay, so basically remember the pattern of the brain, whatever the brain does is because of what the mind is doing.

So the brain on its own content, anything, it simply reflects and it's kind of just listening to whatever the mind tells it to do, it does. So the mind uses the brain to build experiences into the brain, and those experiences in the brain become thoughts. So thoughts are the product of mind. And then from the thought, we then say and do and act and spend on money, whatever, and scarcity, mindset, whatever, all that kind of stuff, for how we use, so we'll use the money example of that. So in the over the last two years, we have been immersed in a very uncertain environment and it has affected, some people have done better financially because they work from home anyway or something like that. People have had to change their way that they do their business. I mean, a lot of us have had to do that.

And so it's created a lot of innovation inside of humans. It's not all bad at all. Change will come when we're forced to do things differently and we've been forced to do things differently. So there's a really positive aspect to that. But all of this that I'm saying, all these experiences, we're all being wired into the brain and into every cell of your body. So we have 37 to 100 trillion cells in our brain and our body collectively. Every experience, and let's just take this two-year COVID period, there's been a lot of experiences that we've had every day in different aspects and that we can then relate

to eventually relate it to, eventually relate it back down to finances or whatever you want to relate it to. But each one of those experiences, and there's about 8,000 a day that we have. have been built into our brain and body by our mind. They don't just get there. If you're alive, they are going in via your mind. But your mind has got a non-conscious aspect to it. None, as an N-O-N.

Not unconscious. Unconscious is when we're asleep or anesthetized or knocked out with a baseball bat. The non-conscious is the biggest, most intelligent part of us. It is our driving force. It is our spiritual nature. It is the spiritual part of us that's deeply wise and on your side, very much looking to,

to get the best of life for you, to keep you as healthy as possible, survival, love-driven, etc., etc. So its job is to store every experience and to manage those experiences in terms of negative, positive. Now, obviously, if it's healthy stuff, you're going to want to just grow that. So you'll know that. The message that the non-conscious mind will send through the conscious mind

is, you know, this is great, you get excited, you get drawn to it, you do more of it, you think more of those good things, whatever you think about the most grows, and then that feeds in and you build your resilience. Then there's the toxic things that happen in our life, like perhaps your business didn't do so well, and you did have major financial issues, and there's been a huge strain. And so those experiences have also wired into the brain, but they would have been toxic. So this would be healthy.

Let's say that you had a good financial last couple of years, so you've got a lot of healthy thoughts, so you're just better at making more money or whatever. The experience that the mind builds into the brain, the life experience, it's built into the brain in proteins and chemicals that form into these tree-like structures. And there's three parts. This is how you're interpreting yourself. This is the interpretation of how you see yourself in that situation. This is the roots or the origin-like roots in a plant.

And this collectively is how you then show up, how you are physically managing your money. So there's the conscious thing that's happened. Then there's the unconscious stuff. And so we've consciously focused on stuff and we've built that into your brain and then that goes into an unconscious mind. But then there is, and this is really crazy, Rachel, there's 95% of who you are and how you're functioning now today at this moment. And we can relate it purely, in this case, your discussion is around finance. How you are functioning financially, 95% of that is driven by your life experiences that

were built into your brain non-consciously that you weren't even aware of. So right from very young, every experience you've had with money and finances has, and this goes for everything, not just money, but we're using money as the example. has built into your brain non-consciously. So we literally as humans, by the nature of our humanity, by the nature of the way that we are structured, mind-brain body and the mind being spirit and our soul, is that as soon as we interact in life,

we're going to be building the world into us. So this is a very particular. It's a great thing. I mean, this is how God has structured us. It's phenomenal. It means that we are, that's how we cope in life. If we did not have these networks and this relationship and life being built in,

we would not be able to even communicate with each other. So it's an incredible gift. But the problem is if it's toxic, if there's an abuse or there's a, you know, the former's on a scale of 1 to 10 and we all experience those. So those are going in unconsciously. So now a lot of the decisions that we make are being driven, all our decisions are being driven by an unconscious mind. Not every, you've got trillions of experiences.

So not all trillion in form one decision. It's related ones. So if you're dealing with a financial thing, it's going to pull up the related financial. So there could be some good ones, which is great and there could be some bad ones. It may be more bad than good. But those, as soon as they pulled up, what it means is that something in your external environment triggers a response. This moves into a conscious mind.

And now this is how you view the current situation. And this is fear. This is scary because this is, oh, I'm going to lose more money or I don't know what to do or I can't feed my kids or you're going to lose a house or whatever it may be. So you're seeing it through that because that's related to that experience. And that's then driving the next decision that you make about finances. So that's kind of what's happening. And the fear then, when you get into that fear state, that disrupts your neurophysiology.

So in the brain, what that looks like is you're going to get a disruption, and I'm going to hold it up to sort of scary looking skull. But the left and the right side, specifically the front, we're going to get a disruption of energy across the two sides. And we never want that. What we want is a balance between the two sides of the brain. We want a lot of oxygen and blood flow specifically in the front, all of the brain, but specifically we want bursts of.

of cycles of high blood and blood flow and oxygen. We want good nutrition. We want the brain to wave like the waves of the sea, where they are big waves far out, and then they get a little bit smaller, and then they build into the sort of buildup into a big wave, and then they get the white crack on top, and then they crash on the beach,

and then make little waves, and they go back in. We want that to be happening all day along with the different energy waves in our brain, which then allows the chemicals to flow correctly, which then allows the electromagnetic effects, et cetera, et cetera. And then that has a downstream effect on our hormones, system, our immune system, our cardiovascular system, pretty much every system down to the level of our DNA, right down to the chromosomes. And the ends of chromosomes are little things called

telomeres, which are like little shoelace, the little end, plastic part of a shoelace, you know, that little ending that holds a shoelace together. I think it was a counselor. Someone said they had this signal almost, this therapist, that when you kind of get in that moment of anxiousness and fear and it kind of starts to take over, it's like this, even this physical signal of kind of pointing to the front of your brain to, remember to breathe to get that oxygen going to kind of almost reset what you're saying, which makes sense because I think people do, they get, whether it's paralyzed or fear, so fear-based with money because they're either thinking, I'm in just a terrible situation where I'm at,

or I want to change what I've been doing. You know, what I've been doing with my money is not working. I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I'm stressed out. I want to change my habit. So how do you tell somebody to change the way they view something in life, right? like if someone's just had the same habit, the same viewpoint, because of their experiences and what they've chosen in life with their money, and they're saying, okay, I want to do something totally different. You know, I say on my show at the time, I'm like, you can change. Like you have to put things in place and da-da-da-da.

But from the true science side, how do you, is it creating new neuro pathways? Like, what is the thought of the brain and the mind to help do something totally different and change habits? Very good question. So we want to get enough oxygen. oxygen first and blood flow to the front of our brain because you want good decision making. So it is very important to prepare the brain and the body. So when you're in that state, as you said, people, you know, we always talk about, look at me, breathe, which is just one of the ways. And there's multiplicity of brain preparation, things you can do, which will calm down your neurophysiology.

So before you can do any changing, you do need to calm down your neurophysiology because it's like otherwise, it's like driving a car through a snowstorm with no windscreen wipers. you're going to make a lot of bad decisions. So what we can do is we have to get ourselves or mind managed. Think of it like this. You can go three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without oxygen, but you cannot even go three seconds without your mind working. So if you don't manage your mind, it'll carry on getting more messy.

And so the neurophysiology side, the breathing and that kind of thing, this helps reset the neurophysiology. And you may have to do it. I find the most effective one that I did with patients and I do with myself when I'm in that state where I just can't function, is to breathe in for three counts, but really breathe deeply so that your stomach blows out, literally, that you fill up your stomach. So you've really got to push that stomach out. And then you force out for seven counts. In for three and out for seven. And if you do that six to nine times, so it's for 60 to 90 seconds, it's a fantastic, very efficient

tool to bring your breathing. There's many different ways of breathing. But from the work I've done, that is my go-to every time when someone's in a really bad place. And, you know, you just want and get your cognition back online and that sort of thing. Then the next thing to do is you have to be very systematic. As humans, we are, I mean, this you will relate to because of your, you know, your financial background. In the little protein branches of every thought, there's all made of proteins. Inside that protein, there's a vibration and that vibration is actually a calculation that's happening. So your brain is doing like millions and millions of calculations every second. It's picked up as an energy vibration inside a protein.

So proteins are like alive with calculations. So it's very systematic and organized. So now sometimes your computer packs up and you have to edit the code. In the case of finances, you're in this panic state. So you need to edit the code. So calming down and then five-step process. The first thing is you gather awareness. And that gather.

And notice I say gather because it means that you're empowered to take control. You are standing back and observing. It's not that it lands on your head. You choosing, there's choice involved. you do it when you're ready. It's calm. It's not non-judgmental, all that stuff. That's what gathering means. And you gather awareness what of, of how you function. How are you in relation to this financial thing? Exactly how you describe the problem and set it up. So what are you feeling? What are your emotions? Gather awareness of those emotions. I'm feeling depressed. How's your body

feeling? How are you doing and saying? I'm panicking. I just don't know what to do. I'm frozen. Perspective, I'm going to lose all my money. Okay, four signals. You look at those emotions, body reactions, behaviors, what you're saying do and perspective. You become aware of those. And then that exercise actively starts connecting you with your intuition, get your intuitive abilities going, starts connecting you with an unconscious mind, the deep spiritual part of you,

which will then send a thought up. So those signals will point to a thought. And that thought has a name. And that name is, I'm worried about money. I'm worried about the next decision. Whatever it is specific to your situation, I'm just giving a very broad term. And so then you go to the first to the top part.

The top part over here is what did the signals point to your interpretation? What am I thinking? In other words, take those four signals and now expand them into full sentences. I'm feeling depression, but why? I'm also feeling sad. I'm feeling frustrated because I don't know what to do. Okay, so now we've got more description. Then take the next one.

What am I saying and doing? Well, I'm irritable, worked up. I don't know what decision to make. I'm making bad. I'm buying the wrong stuff. I'm spending my money wrong. I'm not saving. So what are you doing?

So you get more specific and you do that with each signal. That then starts showing you what. you're doing and you've now weakened these branches. So neuroscientifically, these branches have become weakened. So you can now take advantage of neuroplasticity, which is what when I talk about editing the code or rewiring the neural code, we're using neuroplasticity. But it's mind directed. Then you start asking yourself, the second step is to reflect. And you do this in a very ordered way. Time limits, like a couple of minutes in each step, you're not going to solve this in one day. You do this over 63 days cycles because that's how long it's going to take you to find

and rewire and find the right thing. So you go to the next step, which is to reflect, and that is asking yourself to who, the what, the way, and the way, the why. Why am I feeling like this? What is the circumstances? And be as specific as you can. Then you write.

Third step is you write in a form that's called a metacog, which is all over the page. Just pour your thoughts, no order. The writing step, it's very important that you just write very fast, what you've gathered, awareness and reflected on because that will bring stuff up from your non-conscious that you're not aware of. The fourth step is called the recheck,

also a writing step. Notice I'm tracking down this thing. I've gone from there. I'm actually tracking down because you're going deeper and deeper to the root system. So it makes sense of, okay, this is,

I've got this pattern that's happening at this time. Where is it happening? When's it happening? How, what situations are you getting, you're starting to see the patterns and then you start creating antidotes. In other words, you start reconceptualizing. This has happened.

What can I do about it? And then you end that bit of work. Don't transolve this in one day. You ended with step five, which is an active reach, which is one statement, okay, I can see that I'm very frustrated because I'm really making bad decisions with my money. I need to get some sort of level of help. And that's okay. That statement is what you hang on to for the rest of the day. The statement that you end off

with step five, the active reach is all you think about during, as you go through the day, every time you want to fall back into the fear pattern, you use this healthier positive, I'm going to get help, it's going to be okay. I know the reason why. Whatever it is, whatever the little statement is, it could be you could attach it. to that, you could attach a favorite quote, to encourage you, to motivate you. So that's where the motivational stuff would come in. And during the day, the day goes by and you find yourself getting that gut-wrenching fear, you don't allow it, you capture that, and you just think of the positive thing. And then the next day, you go deeper and you start, your active reach could end up

being, go and see what Rachel Cruz says about how to deal with this, and I'm going to start getting. And so you work through, by day 63, or by day 21, actually, you would have deconstructed this and reconstructed it into some healthy thing. It doesn't mean this disappears completely, but it's now weak and very little and tiny, and this one dominates. And this is now what you want to stabilize. But it's still not big enough to dominate. This can still come back. So to make sure this doesn't come back, you spend another 42 days, five minutes a day. The first 21 days, you spend about 15 minutes. The second 42 days, you spend about five minutes. And that just go through the five steps quickly. And you're just expanding on this and you're adding more

things that you can do and you may be speaking to people and you're getting a plan in place and you're getting it and you're starting the plan. So it's very action-oriented and stabilizing. The mistake people make, Rachel, is that they keep going back into the same cycle. You will keep going back and will not change unless you follow systematically through the timeframe. So the 63 days is literally what it needs to book you, to change a habit. You don't need 21. It's not enough time. You're worse at 21 days. If you stop there, you're going to fall back really badly. And that's where a lot of people do. They stop at Day 4, 7, 14 and 21. And it's not good to stop that you need a push onto 42 to complete the neural recoding in the brain and the body in order

to get the new habit going. So fascinating. And what I love about it, though, is that there's this level of intentional living to understand what you're feeling, what's going on inside of you, what your situation is. And I think it's so easy just to kind of live at the surface level of life and just go through the motions. You kind of get through the day. But when you really do dig under that level and you really start asking yourself and understand what's going on, that's not only when change is made, but also you know yourself more. And I think it helps relationally and all of it. So there's just a richness to it that I love and you bring the science to it, which I think is just beautiful. Okay. So before we wrap up, I have a question because I'm a spender when it comes to

money. So really quickly, what happens to the brain when we spend money? Because we talk about spenders and savers. Do you have any science around that? There's a reward system involved. So basically the reward system is a lot more complicated than we used to think in the past. It's got a lot more involved in it. And it's basically what, you know, you can, sometimes even the toxicity can be a reward system because you get that initial high. So it's sometimes it's a coping strategy. Something happens to us. We have a coping strategy, which is fine in the moment, but it's not sustainable over time. And when you have something that copes, it helps you cope in the moments you get a neurophysiological reaction and that reinforces it. So that's what happens when, you know, sometimes people will get that

from saving, from spending, whatever. I mean, there's nothing wrong with spending as long as it's being balanced and all that that kind of stuff you say. But the coping mechanism is so true, though, of spending as it feels too? You've got to see, is it disruptive? Is it a coping mechanism that is actually coming from something that you haven't resolved and that you haven't reconceptualized? You've got to embrace process and reconceptualize, which is what the neuropsychel teaches you

to do. And then you can move forward. So basically, when I talk about the neuropycle for finances, this is not just, this is for everything. We should always be renewing our mind. This is pretty much the science of renewing our mind, and it's something we're supposed to be doing all day long. So then it can apply over,

and we can find a balance in saving and spending. It's amazing. Well, Dr. Caroline Leif, you are brilliant, but I really do. I appreciate you coming on. And just talking about this, because I think it is. I think we are just complex people.

Very. And we can talk about our habits. We can talk about our choices with money, all of it. But understanding truly our brain and our mind, I think gives us such power. So thank you for coming. I mean, where can everyone find you?

My website's Dr.Leaf.com, and my social media handle is Dr. Caroline Leaf. I'm on all the normal platforms, Instagram, Facebook. I'm also on TikTok. My podcast is called Cleaning Up the Mental Mess. I've got an app called Neuropsychel. There it is. It's on iTunes and Google Play. So that's literally me giving you therapy, walking you through the process with audio

and visual and so on. My latest book is cleaning up a mental mess, which is available where the books are sold. It's beautiful. So wonderful. Well, thank you for all the work. you do. I know you've helped so many people, even just in my own personal circle, you have a lot of fans that I know, a lot of friends and family. So, well, thank you. I appreciate your work and thanks again for coming on. Thank you so much and thank you for what you do. Thank you.

Okay, one thing that I am loving right now, super random, but I do. I use it every day. A wireless phone charger. Mm-hmm. It's on my nightstand and instead of me falling off my bed every night trying to get the cord, it's just sitting right there. And I just love it. And I just love it. lay my little phone on top of it and it charges. It's a beautiful thing. You just get on Amazon. It's pretty inexpensive, but that is one thing that I am loving right now. And one thing that I am learning right now, it's in parenting, y'all.

We had the situation happen. We had not had it happen before with our kids, but there was a little altercation at school. This stuff happened. And I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do. I had a correct one of our kids and discipline, the whole thing. And I just had a friend, and she just reminded me, she said, Rachel, remember to connect before you correct. And I love that because I do. I long for a relationship with my kids, but yet there has to be that discipline and that correction.

So balancing that all as a parent, I feel like I'm learning. Oh, it's easy some days. It's harder on other days. But yeah, that's kind of what I'm in the middle of right now. God bless our kids. Well, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. And thank you to Dr. Caroline Leaf for being on. She was such a fantastic guest.

And for you guys, if you have not subscribed to this podcast, make sure to hit the follow button. And if the spirit leads, you can leave a review. As always, make sure to take control of your money and create a life you love.